Since the three Ws played a pivotal role in West Indies' emergence as a cricket power, it is hard to think of three batting contemporaries who have had such an impact on a nation's cricket fortunes as India's middle order. They have been slotted into boxes that they each dislike – the genius, the builder and the artist – but for 15 years, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman have been united by a common purpose. When Laxman made his debut in November 1996, India were far from being cricket's pre-eminent power. Hard to beat on spin-friendly surfaces at home, they were soft touches away, a fact amply illustrated in the Boxing Day Test of 1996, when South Africa skittled them for 100 and 66 in Durban. India had produced great batsmen before them, most notably Sunil Gavaskar and the two Vijays, Merchant and Hazare. But away from home comforts, their task usually involved digging trenches and saving face.
The numbers are revealing. Half the nation's 110 Test wins have come in the period after Laxman's debut. Before then, India had won 13 of 139 Tests overseas. Since, they have triumphed in 24 of 83. In the last decade, when they came into their own, they have won more (22) than they have lost (19) away.
As they take guard in England for the last time as a group, they remain a fascinating study in contrasts. Tendulkar was the prodigy who took the elevator while the others climbed the stairs, to paraphrase a lovely Vinod Kambli quote about the man he once shared a world-record partnership with. By the time Dravid and Sourav Ganguly made their debuts at Lord's in the summer of 1996, he had played 39 Tests, scoring nine centuries along the way.
Born within two years of each other, Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman belonged to the 1983 generation, the chosen few from among thousands of boys who took to bat and ball in earnest once Kapil Dev's unfancied team pulled off one of the great sporting upsets in the World Cup final at Lord's. India in those days was nothing like what it has become post-economic liberalisation. If you came from middle-class families, like the three did, pursuing a career in sport was frowned upon. You were encouraged to study hard and then take up a job that guaranteed financial security. In the mid-1980s, you had to be a household name like Sunil Gavaskar or Kapil Dev to make decent money from cricket.
If you were a teenager then, life after school invariably involved some sort of sport. There were no Playstations, trips to McDonald's or the other little luxuries that children from fairly well-to-do families can take for granted now. Dravid grew up in a quiet residential suburb of Bangalore, where the roads became temporary pitches every evening. Laxman had his first lessons at his grandmother's house, guided by his uncle and older brother. Tendulkar, a John McEnroe-wannabe as a small boy, played most of his early cricket on the grounds of the small housing society where his father, a poet, had been given an apartment.
Their career trajectories were very different too. Tendulkar arrived like a meteor, one of those once-in-a-lifetime prodigies who actually lived up to the hype. He made a century on his first-class debut and was considered unlucky not to make the tour of the Caribbean when still just 16. Less than a year later, he did play against Pakistan, showing great maturity in tackling a bowling line-up that could boast of Imran Khan, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis. He was still only 17 when he made his first Test hundred, a match-saving 119 at Old Trafford in the summer of 1990.
As an 18-year-old in Australia in 1991-92, he had scored a sublime hundred at Sydney and a courageous one on a Perth trampoline where most of his teammates froze. Peter Roebuck was moved to say later: "Between them, those two innings expressed Tendulkar. The rest has been a struggle as genius wrestled with adulthood." There have been rough patches since, but for the most part, his 22-year-long career has been a remarkably rare example of performance matching sky-high expectation.
Dravid made his first-class debut a few months after Tendulkar's first Test century. Laxman, who seriously contemplated following his parents into the medical field, waited another two years to test the waters. Both made steady rather than spectacular progress and were well accustomed to the cut and thrust of the domestic game by the time the national cap came their way.
Dravid made 95 on debut and a superb 148 at the Wanderers not long after but was not always a composed and assured figure in those early years, when his stolid style and sedate scoring invited a fair bit of criticism. He reinvented himself enough to score a dazzling 153 at Taunton during the 1999 World Cup, but the label of being an old-fashioned type of player never quite went away.
Laxman's plight was worse. With no middle-order spot available, he often had to open the batting. There were times when it came off, as during a glorious 167 against Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne and Brett Lee at the SCG in January 2000, but there came a point when he decided that he had had enough, that if the selectors wanted him to play, they would have to find a spot in the middle for him.
In his first 20 Tests, Laxman averaged 27. Then came Eden Gardens and that famous 376-run partnership with Dravid, Indian cricket's equivalent of the parting of the Red Sea . Both men built on that success in the years that followed. Between then and 2006, Dravid was consistency personified. In England in 2002 and Australia a year later, he scored more than 600 runs in a Test series. He, Tendulkar and Ganguly were instrumental in the Headingley victory of 2002, and in Steve Waugh's farewell series 18 months later, the trio along with Laxman and Virender Sehwag aggregated more than 2000 runs.
With John Wright as coach and Ganguly as captain, India started to hold their own in alien conditions. Victory in Pakistan for the first time [2004] was the pinnacle of that era, but once Wright gave way to Greg Chappell, the scenario changed.
Ganguly was dropped, Laxman's dodgy knees were held against him and while Tendulkar struggled with a shoulder problem that eventually needed surgery, Dravid's form dipped with the cares of captaincy. On the tour of England in 2007, there were no hundreds, even though Ganguly and Laxman averaged 50. Dravid managed just 126 runs, while Tendulkar departed with two half-centuries. Few imagined that they would be back.
But under Gary Kirsten, each man found inspiration in different ways. Dravid scored a career-saving century against England at Mohali (2008), while Tendulkar put together the most prolific year of his career in 2010. Both have superb records against England, but not one of Laxman's 16 centuries has come against them. The Australia-slayer is most at ease on fast and bouncy pitches, but the horizontal deviation that typifies most English surfaces has frequently been his undoing. That said, he has enjoyed two of the best years of his career, battling crippling back problems to script epic victories against Sri Lanka, Australia and South Africa in the last 12 months.
Their departure, and Father Time's tap on the shoulder could come soon, won't mean the panic button for Indian cricket but it may be a while before the middle order has such a monolithic feel to it. Dravid's solidity and powers of concentration, Laxman's gift for charting a course out of a crisis and Tendulkar's uncanny ability to seek out pastures new have not just inspired Indian cricket's greatest moments. They've acted as a spur to a generation. When Virat Kohli spoke emotionally after the World Cup final of Tendulkar having carried Indian cricket for two decades, he could have been talking of Dravid, Laxman, Ganguly and Anil Kumble as well.
Like the three Ws – Sir Frank Worrell, Sir Clyde Walcott and Sir Everton Weekes, who made their debuts within a month of each other in 1948 – they have achieved all this without the clash of egos that can often tear a team of big personalities apart. There's no mistaking the mutual regard. After a pristine 178 from Laxman at Sydney in 2004, Tendulkar [who made 241] said: "I certainly wasn't going to try what he was doing, because he was in such great touch."
While they have not yet revealed an exit plan, it is fairly certain that cricket-lovers in England will not see them together once this summer is over. With more than 35,000 Test runs and 99 centuries between them, they have helped define Indian cricket's most successful era. And all this while proving that the adage about nice guys finishing last is just nonsense.
